Call for papers: Role of Enabling Technologies in Optimising Supply Chain Activities

http://www.inderscience.com/browse/callpaper.php?callID=547

Call for papers: Role of Enabling Technologies in Optimising Supply Chain Activities

A special issue of the International Journal of Value Chain Management (IJVCM)

Important dates:

Manuscript submission: 31 May 2007

Reviewer reports: 31 August 2007

Revised paper submission: 31 October 2007

Final manuscript submission: 30 November 2007

Guest Editors: Dr. K. L. Choy and Dr. Henry C.W. Lau, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Dr. Felix T. S. Chan, University of Hong Kong

Demand for customer-tailored products and time-to-market present great challenges for fixed and linear supply chains that are competing in today’s market. While the prevalent linear supply chain model is supported by physical infrastructure that includes plants, trucks, rail, shipping lines, physical distribution points, including retail outlets and warehouses, the new envisioned model for product supply chain will be built around entities such as, people, information and smart products.

In addition, constant innovation in managing information and strategy is required for a sustainable enterprise as it responds to today’s business demands in a much more dynamic environment. Hence, in order to succeed in an unpredictable competitive marketplace, enterprises need to manage their supply chain activities, information, technologies and strategy effectively and innovatively.

Supply chain and logistics enabling technologies have taken a prominent role to integrate people, information and products across traditional supply chain boundaries including management of various manufacturing, logistics and retailing operations such as in manufacturing, warehousing and distribution of goods. Therefore, optimisation models integrating with web-based systems as well as smart materials represented by actuators and sensors, tagging represented by global positional system and radio frequency identification technology tags, and decentralised processing among trading partners can create a new manufacturing, logistics and distribution processes that provide a dynamically controlled supply chain network.

This Special Issue aims to align latest practice, innovation and case studies with academic frameworks and theories. It will include the latest research results and efforts at different levels including quick-response system, theoretical performance analysis, performance and capability demonstration, hoping to cover the role of enabling technologies in optimising supply chain activities. Prospective papers should be unpublished and present novel, fundamental research offering innovative contribution either from a methodological or an application perspective.

For more information, please see the Journal Call for Papers website.